UK clears Facebook’s purchase of CRM maker, Kustomer

The UK’s competition watchdog has cleared Facebook’s acquisition of Kustomer, a maker of CRM tools. The purchase was announced last November — with a price-tag we reported as $1BN — but is pending closing after facing regulatory scrutiny. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opened an inquiry on the proposed merger this summer, at […]

Bleak Christmas: turkeys, trees and toys under threat from labour shortage, suppliers say

Government steps to remedy lack of food processors and drivers are ‘thimble of water on a bonfire’, industry experts sayThe UK could face a “national shortage” of turkeys in the lead-up to Christmas brought on by a lack of labour following Brexit, the …

The Guardian view on Starmer’s Labour: time to take on the Tories | Editorial

The Labour leader must know his party faces existential implications if it suffers a historic fifth election defeatBritons usually eat more than 10m turkeys during the festive season. If the country were to run short of the yuletide bird then that may …

My Secret Brexit Diary by Michel Barnier review – a British roasting

The EU’s chief negotiator found his UK counterparts bizarrely unfocused during the long haul to fix a Brexit deal – and believes they still don’t know what they’ve doneRarely do we see thinking of the other side of a negotiation so quickly, while the t…

EU warns Russia over ‘Ghostwriter’ hacking ahead of German elections

The European Union has warned it may take action over Russia’s involvement in “malicious cyber activities” against several EU member states. The “Ghostwriter” campaign targeted “numerous members of Parliaments, government officials, politicians, and members of the press and civil society in the EU”, according to a press release from the European Council on Friday, and was […]

UK’s AI strategy is ‘ambitious’ but needs funding to match, says Faculty’s Marc Warner

The U.K. published its first-ever national AI strategy this week. The decade-long commitment by the government to levelling up domestic artificial intelligence capabilities — by directing resource and attention toward skills, talent, compute power and data access — has been broadly welcomed by the country’s tech ecosystem, as you’d expect. But there is a question […]